The proceeding days were almost intolerable. I tried to keep busy, which was the hardest part. I had nothing to do, but I wanted to steer clear of my father. When he would come in the house, I would go out and try to get some things down around the store or go shopping alone. Most evenings I would find myself at the library looking through law books trying to figure out how much trouble Emry was in and if I could find any information as far as court hearings or the average prison sentence of convicted murderers, but every state was different and the terminology wasn’t exactly the easiest for me to understand. I often found myself giving up and slamming the books shut. Then I would just sit there and mull over how irritable of a person I was becoming, how nothing seemed to be working out in my life all of a sudden and I would just sit there, arms crossed, sulking. I felt as if I had nowhere to go.
I would go from feeling sorry for myself to sorry for my mother. It wasn’t fair that she didn’t know. But then I would get to thinking that it was possible that she did know. Could she be so blind as to not see what he was doing? Was she actually just letting him get away with it? But then I would feel instantly guilty every time the thought crossed my mind. The matter of the fact was that in reality I had been that blind. I would have never in a million years thought my father capable of such a transgression.
Snowflakes floated down from the sky overhead as the sun had already set, and I inhaled the brisk air deeply and tried to hold it in my lungs as I walked to my car. I watched the lights flicker out in the library and someone appeared at the front door to lock up. They had kicked me out again. I had stayed till closing.
I drove home in another one of my moods. It was dinnertime, and I knew I would have to sit at the dining room table with my father directly across from me. I didn’t know if I could do it without exploding at him. I was so tired of trying to hide the way I felt from everyone around me. I knew this wasn’t healthy.
I parked my car in its usual spot in the driveway and checked the mailbox before going up the walk. It was empty. The smell of sauerkraut and dumplings filled my nostrils as I entered the warm house and hung up my coat and scarf on the rack beside the front door.
“Just in time,” Matthew said to me, wheeling himself away from the dining room table a little bit so he could get a better look at me. “Come eat.”
I smiled at him. I was grateful that he had no clue as to what was going on around him. I had to deal with the situation, and even though I was completely miserable, it was a relief to know that Matthew would always remain happy.
“Working late again?” my father asked, raising his eyebrows up at me as I passed through the dining room toward the kitchen.
“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, refusing to make eye contact with him. I found my mother with her back turned toward me as she twirled a spoon in a pot on the stove. I tried to see what else needed done in here to continue to make myself useful and busy.
“Hi, hun,” she said pleasantly. “You’re a popular woman today.”
I eyed her suspiciously.
She smiled as she stuck her finger in the pot and then in her mouth. “You got a letter today. It’s on the table. And Buck called, too. He wants you to call him back.” I stood there frozen for a moment. Where did she say the letter was? My eyes quickly darted all around the counter until I spotted a small pile of envelopes. I automatically wanted to run over there, grab it and sprint up to my bedroom, but I knew that that would only make me look like a crazy person. I recomposed myself, took a deep breath and tried to walk as calmly and normally as I possibly could over to the counter. Reading my name, I immediately knew it was Emry’s handwriting in the same off-white envelope he had sent the last one in, but instead of a return address stating it was from the jail, it was blank. I felt my pulse rate speed up.
“Who’s it from?” she asked curiously as she continued to stir. I shrugged. “Probably from Mandi Liswich. I talked to her not long ago. Do you remember her?” Mandi Liswich was a girl I had gone to high school with that I used to be fairly close to until she went away to college and then eventually moved out of town altogether. From time to time we would write to each other, so it was the fastest lie that entered my head.
“Of course I do. She was such a lovely girl.”
“I think she’s coming back to town to visit her parents sometime soon. I’ll read it later. It’s probably a long one.” I shoved the letter into the pocket of my jeans. Sitting through dinner was even more intolerable than I had anticipated. Everyone was chatty, and I found myself chatting along about nothing important, even speaking to my father from time to time, wanting nothing more than to shove every bite in my mouth, swallow it whole and be done with dinner so I could excuse myself to my bedroom for the rest of the night to read my letter, but again, that would mean me not acting like my normal self. Not that avoiding the family the last few days was normal, but it was something that likely would go without question. I had to be extra cautious, I reminded myself. They would catch on if I made too many mistakes.
I was so relieved when I was finally able to reach the sanctuary of my bedroom. I almost hesitated for a moment, thinking that my mother would burst in at any second and want to see the letter for herself, but I knew she was still washing dishes downstairs and cleaning up from dinner. I sat down in a small wooden chair that was near the window and unfolded the envelope that was now crinkled from being inside my pocket.
Dear Anna, I know you didn’t want me to write, but it’s been so long. I need to know what you think of me, if you think about me at all. You’re all that I think about. Please come see me again. It feels like it’s getting hard to breathe in here not knowing when and if you’ll return to me.
E.L. My heart ached with a longing to jump in my car and rush straight toward the jail to see him. He was thinking about me just as much as I was him. His letter was so short and simple, yet felt so powerful. Emry Logan was missing me. What could this all mean, and where did I stand now? The confusion came on again as my emotions overwhelmed my mind, and I struggled to think straight. I didn’t know what I meant to him, but I knew what I had to do. I had to go see him right away. Tomorrow, yes. I would go tomorrow. Amy Wright or Anna James, one of them would find their way into that jail.
“Anna!”
I jumped at the sound of my name being hollered up the stairs. “Yeah?”
“Phone!”
I grabbed the cordless from its charger on my dresser and hit the on button. As soon as I pressed my ear up to it, I heard the downstairs phone click off.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Anna.”
It was Buck. Hadn’t my mother said something earlier about how I was supposed to call him back? I had forgotten all about it.
“Hey, Buck. Sorry I didn’t get a chance to call you back yet.” Emry’s letter was still gripped in my hand as my eyes scanned over his words once more.
His breathing was kind of heavy in the phone as if he were out of breath. “Oh, no problem. Is now a good time?”
“Sure. What’s up?” I folded the letter and pressed it in between the pages of the same book that held Emry’s first letter to me. I put the book back in its place on the shelf.
“How are things going?” It took me a moment to understand what he was asking. He wanted to know if I still had a relationship with my father, if my mother still held a relationship with him. I had forgotten he’d witnessed all of that. “Oh, same old, same old,” I told him, hoping he wouldn’t pry too much more.
“How are you holding up?” he asked, sounding truly concerned.
My irritable mood instantly returned. Thanks, Buck, I thought. I was beginning to think I could possibly be bipolar. “I’m fine, I guess.”
He hesitated, sensing my unwillingness to talk to him about the matter. “Well, I thought maybe you might need to get out of the house, go out and do something fun.” “I do. What did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. Anything. How about … I could make you dinner,” he suggested. I let ou
t a small chuckle. “Buck, do you cook?”
“Hey now,” he said, pretending I had hurt his feelings. “I can buy food and put it in the bowl to make it look like I cook.”
It was a little funny to think of him capable of making a meal.
“Tomorrow night after work come over to my place. I’ll make you dinner, and maybe we could rent a movie or something, too.”
I hesitated for a moment. This was definitely a date date. I did need out of the house though, and I did need to get closer to Buck to see if he could tell me any other information about Emry. “All right. See you tomorrow then.” Buck’s mood was lightened by my acceptance of his invitation. His voice instantaneously became louder and more cheerful. “See you then. Oh, and come hungry.”
“Do you have to work at all or do you get to have the day off?” I was pleased with how I snuck the question in at the last second.
“Actually I haven’t worked all week. Taking a few days off.”
“Oh.” Now I was the one whose voice sounded more cheery. “Well, I do have to work, so I’ll be there sometime around six.”
“Have a good night, Anna.”
“You too.” I started off the next day in a pleasant mood. I got up bright and early and planned out what I was going to wear, that I was going to pull my hair back and put some makeup on. I was sure I still had lip gloss somewhere in the bathroom drawer. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to actually apply the makeup until I was in my car later that day after telling my mother that I was going to go have lunch with Mandi Liswich somewhere out of town so I could have a little extra time. She told me to say hello to Mandi for her, and I easily got out to my car and parked a few blocks away from the antique store so I could put on the mascara and blush that I had stored away in my purse that morning.
I peered back at my reflection in the rearview mirror. I thought I actually looked pretty good considering it had been years since I had worn makeup and also because of the fact that I was applying it in the poor quality of light from within my car. I put the car into Drive and sped off toward the prison, a fluttering sensation of butterflies in my stomach mixed with a combination of my heart beating unusually fast took over and only increased after I had parked the car.
The same pattern happened as before. I had to go up to the window and sign in. Who would I be today? Amy or Anna? I shuffled the thought around momentarily before writing down my own name on the piece of paper. It probably wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had, but I was feeling a bit risky. Then I sat with a slightly larger group of visitors today than before in the same small waiting room area.
“Okay,” a police woman said coming into the room at last. “Let’s go.” She looked down over her list. “Which one of you is Anna James?”
My heart felt like it stopped. Why had she pinpointed me out? Was something going wrong? I felt slightly dizzy as if with any quick movement I would black out.
I raised my hand unsteadily to reveal myself, but the officer barely looked at me. “You’ll have to stay here and wait. We have two people wanting to visit the same person, so what we will do is, we will split the time in half. I will come back and get you when it’s your turn,” she said.
I slumped back into my chair. My eyes darted toward the faces of the people now going into the room to see the prisoners. Which one was here to see Emry? He said he never had any visitors. I don’t know why I was looking so intently, as if I could read their minds or faces and be able to tell exactly which one was going in to talk to him. My heart sank. I would only get to spend half of the time allotted with him today. I would have to share him. It made me agitated and furious. I clenched my hands into tight balls and felt them beginning to sweat from doing so. Patience wasn’t my finest quality, and it sure wasn’t coming into play now when I needed it the most.
I began to picture Emry. He was so close, yet I couldn’t see him. He was talking to someone else now. Someone from his family? Had Lainey Tritt possibly come to see him? I had no idea because I knew nothing of him really. Maybe a friend had come?
I started to become worried as the realization hit me that they’d soon pull that person out and I would have to pass by them. They would look at me, I would look at them, and we would recognize each other as a visitor of Emry. I didn’t want anyone to look at me and wonder why their time had been split in half as well. I was trying to stay low key.
“Ms James?” I stood up, startled. The same police woman entered in from the other room and motioned for me to come forward. It was now my turn. I felt almost clumsy as my feet didn’t seem to want to work. I passed through the narrow entrance and saw a row of people talking on the phones to each other. Headed straight toward me was a short, thin woman with bright blonde hair and red lipstick. A young girl was by her side walking parallel to her. Their eyes were glued on me. The older woman seemed to be giving me a death look like she was furious and wanted to lash out at me, and before I knew it, they had walked by and were headed out the door, and the officer was directing me to go sit down where they had just gotten up from.
“And she’s returned,” Emry said into the phone when I first picked it up and held it to my ear. “You look beautiful, by the way. There’s something different about you. Your hair. Your hair is pulled back,” he complimented me, smiling, more talkative than usual.
I stared at his face. He looked happy today. I retraced the features that I had merely grasped in memory over the last month. Had his hair grown longer? He still had wisps of it in his eyes, some of it brushed back as he sometimes ran his fingers through it. And there were those eyes again. I felt as if I could get lost in them if I stared too long.
“What’s wrong?” he quickly asked, seeing through me more quickly than most people. “Who were those two girls that were just here?”
“I think you made her pretty mad,” he told me, amused at the idea and laughing quietly to himself.
“I think I caught that by the way she was looking at me on her way out.” I waited for a moment. He offered no further explanation. “Who was she?”
Emry’s smile quickly disappeared. He looked away from me to his hand and tapped his fingers on the desk in front of him anxiously.
“You don’t want to tell me?”
“No, I do. Well, I don’t, no, but I will.” He still had his head shifted downwards as we sat there saying nothing for a moment. I hated wasting valuable time like this. “Why is it so hard to tell me? Please,” I pleaded, my eyes burning into his as he looked up just then. He sighed. “Her name’s Candace Ramey, and the girl was her daughter, Traci.” I waited for him to go on.
He looked at my face again and then up to my hair and down to my lips before returning to my eyes. “Candy’s my ex.” “Ex-girlfriend?” The words stuck as if they didn’t want to come out. My mouth felt suddenly dry. He slowly shook his head. “No. My ex-wife.”
For some profound reason that I couldn’t explain, I suddenly felt a very similar feeling to the one I had experienced when I saw my father with Mrs. Anderson that foggy evening. My chest felt like it was being weighed down, suffocating me as I found it very difficult to breathe, and a strange sensation zipped across my stomach and then shot outwards to the rest of my body. Why did every emotion I seemed to get these days have to be so powerful and take control of every inch of me? I suddenly felt too warm and quickly took off my coat to try to cool down before I really did faint.
“You were married?” That word definitely stuck harder than the last ones. “I know, I know,” he said as if feeling remorseful. “It was a long time ago. It didn’t last long, only about eight months.” He rewet his lips with the edge of his tongue before continuing on. “I thought that we had had something once, but I was wrong. She had been in trouble, I had helped her out, and then one thing had led to another, and before I knew it, we were married. But the whole thing was a mess, a huge mistake that I wish I could take back. I regret every moment of it.” He looked up and straight into my own brown eyes. “You have to believe me.”
/>
And then suddenly I did believe him, because it was hard to even begin to picture the striking Emry Logan actually married to someone who looked like her. She looked … I had to search for the words as I remembered her face … tacky and fake, in my opinion.
“I have no feelings whatsoever for her now,” he added quickly. “Was that your daughter, too?” Another heavy emotion overwhelmed me as I asked him that. My fingertips that were holding the phone were feeling numb, so I switched it over into the other hand, which felt just as numb as the other.
“No. Traci is … was my step-daughter. She’s a good kid. I kind of feel bad leaving her with Candy.”
I don’t know why I felt so traumatized. I knew nothing about Emry at all. So what if he had been married and had this little family before in his past and was now divorced and she was visiting him in jail. Why did it all matter to me so much?
“I’m so glad you came,” he repeated. “You got my letter?” All of the bad feelings washed away from me then and I smiled. “I did. That was very sneaky of you.”
“I couldn’t resist. I meant every word, Anna. You’re all I think about. I can’t explain it.”
“Try,” I said quite boldly. “What is it you’re feeling?” I really did want to know why he bothered with me, why he wrote to me with such a passion saying he needed me and thought about me. I needed an explanation all of it, for this craziness I had suddenly become caught up in.
He paused then and looked down, regrouping his thoughts. “I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Had he just really said that to me? A sudden joy filled my heart as I let the words sink in. I was beautiful? He should be looking in the mirror to see what I was seeing when I looked back at him. No, he was absolutely perfect. I, on the other hand, was just all right.
Strange in Skin Page 6
